Last Goodbye
by ThePreciousHeart
Summary: Llewyn attends Mike's funeral.


**AN: A scene that I couldn't get out of my head until I wrote it down. You can consider it a deleted chapter from my fic No Word of Farewell.**

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The sun was out. It was winter, and the sun was out. It was winter, the sun was out, and Mike was dead.

Despite the surrounding spread of people clad in black, and the six-foot gouge in the earth, all Llewyn could focus on were those three facts. Of fucking _course_ the sun was out, defying all odds. It hardly warmed him – though whether that was because it was winter on Long Island of all places, or because he'd already felt cold inside for days on end, he couldn't say– but it was there nonetheless, like a joke at his expense. Or rather Mike's expense. The sun's presence struck Llewyn as an insufferable indignity. Every funeral he'd ever seen in the movies featured buckets of rain dumping down, gusty winds and oppressive, impenetrable cloud coverage. Hell, it had been cloudy at his mother's funeral, not that Llewyn cared to dredge up the gruesome details of years past. It wasn't fair for the sun to deny Mike an atmosphere of proper respect. He'd suffered enough when he was alive.

Or so the priest said, or perhaps was still saying, last time Llewyn had tuned into his rambling prayer. Llewyn was honestly surprised that he hadn't snapped already and punched the man in the face. Everyone who'd spoken to Llewyn about the "unfortunate incident" was eager to share their own perspective. Mike was troubled. Nothing could have stopped him. Behind his smile lay a great pain that no one could guess at or remove. If the intent was to make Llewyn feel better, each and every person who said this had failed. None of them had lived with Mike for five-going-on-six years. None of them had stood onstage with him, staring deeply into his eyes while matching his every note. None of them had gone to bed with him- at least, Llewyn didn't think they had. The point was, Llewyn was the only one close enough to possess any insight into why Mike had jumped off the George Washington Bridge, and even he had no idea how deeply Mike had suffered. All he knew was that if he had suffered, Llewyn was surely the cause of it.

He watched blankly as the priest's drone trickled to a halt, and the mass of mourners split into clumps. Each one approached the open grave and stooped to gather handfuls of earth. But Llewyn had no eyes for them. Instead his gaze latched onto the box at the center of the grave, just barely visible from his vantage point. For the hundredth time, he tried to make himself believe that Mike was in the box. For the hundredth time, it didn't take. Reducing Mike's essence, his immense height and booming voice and the gentle warmth that rolled off him when sitting an inch closer to Llewyn than necessary, to a pale figure that could be packaged up and sunk into the ground without a second thought seemed another disservice to his existence.

The Timlin family, or those whom Llewyn assumed to be the Timlin family, were the first to scatter the dirt. Though Llewyn had never met any of them, he recognized Mike's parents through intuition. The fragile-looking woman, shaking with sobs and leaning hard against the man at her side as if she'd topple over without him, was clearly the one who'd birthed Mike. She didn't look much like him, but Llewyn had pictured her piercing, watery eyes and wide, red mouth countless times before, as he listened to Mike lash out against her. It was his father whom Mike more closely resembled, but something told Llewyn that he didn't share Mike's demeanor. "Something" primarily being that several hours had passed since he'd first shaken Mr. Timlin's hand, and he still had no idea what to make of him. Never in a million years would Llewyn have expected Mike to kill himself, but at least he'd realized, in a distant, self-denying way, that Mike was hurting. He'd always been an open book. But Mike's father provided an entirely different story. He watched his wife weep over their son's grave with the nonchalance of a first-time theatergoer watching a long and boring play.

The rest of the family distinguished themselves by standing opposite Llewyn, huddled as far from non-family members as possible. There was a sort of dry humor to it. _On the one side, we have the good clean Christian folk. On the other side, Greenwich Village's freak show_. All of Mike's friends had come out to pay their respects– Lowell and Sam and Beth, and of course Jim and Jean. Even Mel had shown up for the service, though he'd stepped out during the burial. It was one of the few things about the day for which Llewyn was grateful. He'd been avoiding Mel's calls all week– in fact, he'd been avoiding the apartment altogether– and if at any moment Mel had taken him aside to talk business, he couldn't predict how he would react, but the results would not be pretty.

Once each family member had taken their turn kneeling before the casket, the formality ebbed. Some mourners turned to leave the gravesite, while others rallied around Mrs. Timlin, who had dragged her husband over to speak with the priest. No one seemed to notice or care when Llewyn's not-so-merry band of renegades followed suit. Jean was the first to step up, sorrow shining in her large brown eyes. As she plunged her hands into the dirt, her lips moved quickly, so quickly that Llewyn couldn't make out what she was saying. Was she praying? He fidgeted, uncomfortable with the age-old tradition and wanting nothing more than to leave the cemetery. _What a drag. Exactly what I want to be doing on a Monday morning. I wish Mike was—_

Llewyn's slip of the mind hit him in the chest. No, Mike _was_ here. He was, but he wasn't, and even if he could be, he wouldn't want to be anywhere near Llewyn, anyway.

The sound of a woman's broken murmurs drove Llewyn from his crystalline realization. He tracked the voice, his eyes landing on the figure of the priest walking with Mike's mother. Cradling her hand in his, he responded calmly and rationally to her choked blubbering.

"There's nothing to worry for, Kathleen. Michael is with the Lord now, and the Lord will provide."

"He was such a sweet young man," Mrs. Timlin moaned. "How could he have done a thing like that?"

"Men who take their own lives are troubled," the priest reassured Mrs. Timlin. "They are not responsible for their own actions. I won't pretend to know what Our Father has in store for Michael, but I promise you, he will be judged fairly and reasonably."

"But you don't _understand_." Mrs. Timlin stopped walking, forcing the priest to do the same. They stood only a couple feet away from Llewyn, and he shifted uneasily, dying to turn his back, but unable to follow through. Helplessly, he watched Mrs. Timlin squeeze the priest's hand even tighter– Llewyn suspected that his hand had lost all feeling– and practically shove herself in his face. "Michael _wouldn't_ have done that. It had to have been an accident! He was drinking— and he didn't know where he was— and- and—"

If Llewyn had wanted to, he could have told Mrs. Timlin the one thing that would have sunk her theory faster than a torpedoed submarine. As it turned out, he didn't have to, because Jean said it for him.

"Mike didn't drink."

Her voice was barely louder than a murmur, but that murmur caught Mrs. Timlin's attention. Her blurry gaze focused on Jean, who slowly turned towards her, resolve hardening her features.

"Mike didn't drink," Jean repeated. "I should know. We went out a thousand times. I _never_ saw him with a drink in his hand. He wasn't intoxicated when he jumped off that bridge. He knew what he was doing."

For half a second, Mrs. Timlin stood in shock, and Llewyn thought for sure that she was going to curse at Jean or run her out of the cemetery. But instead, Mrs. Timlin fiercely shook her head. "_No!_ He wouldn't have done such a thing. Our dear boy would have _never_ done such a thing! If it weren't for heathens like you—"

If there was anything Llewyn knew about Jean, it was that she wouldn't tolerate such an insult, and his assumption proved correct. Eyes blazing, Jean cut Mrs. Timlin off. "Maybe you didn't know your dear boy as well as you thought." Her words barely escaped from their prison of gritted teeth. "When's the last time he talked to you? Or the last time he WANTED to talk to you?"

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Mrs. Timlin insisted. "It's people like you who drove Michael to sin and debauchery!"

"No, it's people like _you!"_ Jean shot back. A twinge went through Llewyn's gut, as if he'd been punched. Jean's defense of Mike was admirable, and her accusation seemed likely– but it wasn't correct. At last Llewyn broke from his passive stupor. He stepped forward. "Hey— that's not—" But whatever half-baked statement he'd been preparing dried up when Mr. Timlin stepped in front of his wife.

"Don't you dare say another word to us."

"Fuck you!" Jean spat, before Jim's restraining arms came around her. Gently he pulled her away from the Timlins, while the rest of the mourners looked on in disbelief. As they passed Llewyn, he saw that there were tears in Jean's eyes. She wiped them away with a shaking hand, but a few coursed down her cheeks like the rain that the day was so sorely missing.

Recognizing that the folks from Greenwich Village had worn out what little welcome they'd possessed, Llewyn followed alongside Jim and Jean. He was glad to turn his back on the whole sorry mess. The people Mike had come from weren't representative of Mike himself. Nothing could bring him back to life. But with each step, Llewyn felt a hard pain grow in his stomach, and his longing to glance over his shoulder grew unbearable.

_So much for a last goodbye._

As Jean descended into sobbing, her friends surrounded her and Jim, insulating them from the rest of the dispersing crowd. Llewyn had never seen Jean cry, and he wished he hadn't. Beth rubbed her shoulders, and Lowell laid his hand on her back, but it was Llewyn who Jean reached to, her fingers searching for comfort. She squeezed his hand as tightly as Mike's mother had squeezed the priest's. For a second, Llewyn met her eyes. Her devastation took his breath away. He was convinced that she could see deep inside him, that she alone knew of what he had done and of his rightful guilt. But he knew she couldn't, because she didn't let go of him.

Llewyn took a deep breath, at once overwhelmed by the constricting black suit he wore, the dizzying out-of-place feeling, the fucking sunlight. He needed to get out of there. He wanted Mike back, and he needed to get out of there. He wanted Mike back, but Mike was dead, and Llewyn might as well have put him in the ground himself.

When the rain finally came on Llewyn's trip back into the city, he was ecstatic.


End file.
